The PGA Championship will settle any tie after 72 holes with a three-hole aggregate playoff on holes 10, 17 and 18, and if that still does not produce a winner, the players will go to sudden death on hole 18. Everyone in the playoff will stay in the same group for the entire finish, a setup that can turn one bad swing into the difference between holding the Wanamaker Trophy and going home second.

The format matters because the championship has used three different ways to break a tie over its history, and the current system has been in place since 2000. Before that came an 18-hole stroke play playoff used from 1958 to 1976, then a sudden-death era that ran from 1977 to 1999. The shift from marathon to sprint to a three-hole test mirrors how major golf has tried to balance fairness, pressure and television-friendly drama without letting a title drag into a second day.

The historical record shows how each version could produce a very different kind of finish. Jerry Barber beat Don January in an 18-hole playoff at Olympia Fields Country Club in 1961, and Don January later lost again in 1967 when he fell 69 to 71 to Don Massengale in an 18-hole playoff at Columbine Country Club. Once the championship switched to sudden death, the finishes became sharper and more abrupt: Lanny Wadkins beat Gene Littler on the third extra hole at Pebble Beach Golf Links in 1977, John Mahaffey outlasted Tom Watson and Jerry Pate on the second hole at Oakmont Country Club in 1978, and David Graham beat Ben Crenshaw on the third sudden-death hole at Oakland Hills in 1979.

That same pattern continued through the 1980s and 1990s. Larry Nelson beat Wadkins on the first sudden-death hole at PGA National in 1987. Paul Azinger beat Greg Norman on the second sudden-death hole at Inverness Club in 1993. Steve Elkington beat Colin Montgomerie on the first sudden-death hole at Riviera Country Club in 1995, and Mark Brooks beat Kenny Perry on the first sudden-death hole at Valhalla Golf Club in 1996. By the time the PGA Championship adopted its current three-hole aggregate format, the playoff had evolved again, this time to create a short but still measured test before sudden death.

That modern version has already produced some notable endings. Tiger Woods beat Bob May in the three-hole playoff at Valhalla Golf Club in 2000. Vijay Singh beat Justin Leonard and Chris DiMarco at Whistling Straits in 2004. Martin Kaymer beat Bubba Watson at Whistling Straits in 2010. Keegan Bradley beat Jason Dufner at Atlanta Athletic Club in 2011. The framework is simple: three holes to separate the field, then hole 18 over and over if needed. It is the PGA Championship’s clearest compromise between endurance and instant pressure, and when a tie reaches Sunday evening, every shot from the 10th tee to the final putt is part of the same race.